Why ‘Game of Thrones’ Didn’t Make Our Best Of The Year (So Far) List

If you perused our list of the 25 best TV shows of 2019 so far, you may have noticed one particular absence: HBO’s Game of Thrones. It’s inarguable that the show is a cultural force almost unlike anything in TV history, the recipient of multiple awards, and an industry in and of itself that powered entertainment journalism and HBO for nearly a decade. So with that in mind, why didn’t Thrones make it on to our list?

There are two easy answers to that question, and one much more difficult one.

The first answer is that this is the best of the year so far, not the best of the year. A lot changes by the time December 31 rolls around. Shows that seemed fresh and relevant in June may not last the (short) test of time. Others will be reclaimed, as hot takes of “actually all the negative takes were wrong” turn the tide of opinion. It used to be that this process would take years; now it sometimes takes less than 24 hours.

Regardless, I’ve personally contributed or been a part of enough “best of” lists at this point to know that nothing holds steady from month to month; we’re not robots, we’re humans, and opinions morph and change with experience and time.

That bleeds nicely into the second answer to the question, which is that this was a list constructed by a group of human beings. The way we developed the list was by having everyone on staff send in their top 10 of the first six months of the year. Those top 10s are ranked (meaning #1 on a list gets a score of 10, #2 gets 9 points, etc.) and then all are culled together. If there’s a tie, there’s a run-off and we construct the list off of that.

Only two people on the Decider staff put Game of Thrones on their lists. Does that mean Game of Thrones was so bad nobody else had it marked down? Certainly not, it just means it wasn’t in their top 10, and the two people who did rank it didn’t have it high enough to give it enough points to make the top 25 overall. I can say Thrones was on my long list, but it didn’t make my final Top 10.

Is this a perfect system? Definitely not (see above about robots not constructing this list), but it works nicely for group-think and with a minimum of arguing. It does mean that shows less people on the staff watch get less of a shot on our final list — my personal apologies to NOS4A2 and Doom Patrol, who I basically threw to the wolves — or that if reaction was mixed, they maybe fall by the wayside.

…Which gets to the difficult answer. There was no way that Game of Thrones was going to end with everyone universally singing its praises, perfectly pleased with the finale. Beyond the fact that has never happened in the history of entertainment, almost everyone you asked wanted something different for the ending; from who sat on the Iron Throne, to the presence of an Iron Throne at all. Would there be more dragons? A zombie invasion? Westeros was Earth the entire time? Theories have been building for decades pre-Thrones, ever since George R.R. Martin published his first book in the series. Even with a good, critically praised finale, there would have been insurmountable issues for many viewers.

Then Season 8 happened, and the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

To be clear, some people were extremely pleased with the finale. And nobody can deny that the production of the show was impressive throughout (hand-wringing about CGI direwolves aside), with iconic performances and moments that will last throughout television history. But for most viewers, you can pinpoint different moments in Season 8 when the show started to stumble. And then it continued to stumble, badly, tumbling down the steps of King’s Landing and getting scorched by dragon-fire.

Not that it’s the only arbiter, but you need look no further than the Rotten Tomatoes score for each season of the show. The show had been universally praised for seven seasons, never falling below a 91% fresh rating. Season 8, on the other hand, fell to 58%. The Metacritic score is a bit higher at 74%, but that’s only because of the mixed/positive reaction to the first three episodes of the season.

And though some on the Decider staff liked the season as well, we generally agreed with this estimation: the first three episodes showed promise, before it all came crashing down. The craft was there in the back half of the season, the performances evident, but the sharp dive in overall plotting, the decisions made with certain characters, and how it all ended with a head-scratching thud instead of a slam dunk tarnished not just the season, but the overall legacy of the show.

To be clear, if you go back and watch earlier seasons of Thrones — as I did, soon after the finale aired — you’ll be reminded just why the show was a cultural movement. But the fact that half the final season was, to a good section of the audience, a dud, means that you won’t be able to discuss or think about the series ever again without bringing up how it wrapped up. Certain shows have had controversial finales, episodes that fans are split about (or were outright bad). Thrones took that feeling and stretched it over nearly four hours of the “73-hour long movie” being made by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Compare that to the other series on our list, which were even — or great — overall, and you can see the disparity.

Does being left off mean Game of Thrones was bad, or if you loved it your opinion is bad? Heck no. Millions of people loved the show, and were completely satisfied finding out that [checks notes] …Bran Stark became king? Really? Well, that doesn’t seem right. But regardless, one list won’t change that feeling. If anything, it can give someone a little more ammunition for those end of the year hot takes that nobody really “got” those last three episodes. Including, maybe, the fine folks at Decider.

Stream Game of Thrones on HBO Go and HBO Now